• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.109-153
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• 1992

This paper estimates a translog cost function for the Korea's banking industry and derives various implications on the prospect for the Korean banking structure in the future based on the estimated efficiency indicators for the banking sector. The Korean banking industry is permitted to operate trust business to the full extent and the security business to a limited extent, while it is formally subjected to the strict, specialized banking system. Security underwriting and investment businesses are allowed in a very limited extent only for stocks and bonds of maturity longer than three year and only up to 100 percent of the bank paid-in capital. Until the end of 1991, the ceiling was only up to 25 percent of the total balance of the demand deposits. However, they are prohibited from the security brokerage business. While the in-house integration of security businesses with the traditional business of deposit and commercial lending is restrictively regulated as such, Korean banks can enter the security business by establishing subsidiaries in the industry. This paper, therefore, estimates the efficiency indicators as well as the cost functions, identifying the in-house integrated trust business and security investment business as important banking activities, for various cases where both the production and the intermediation function approaches in modelling the financial intermediaries are separately applied, and the banking businesses of deposit, lending and security investment as one group and the trust businesses as another group are separately and integrally analyzed. The estimation results of the efficiency indicators for various cases are summarized in Table 1 and Table 2. First, security businesses exhibit economies of scale but also economies of scope with traditional banking activities, which implies that in-house integration of the banking and security businesses may not be a nonoptimal banking structure. Therefore, this result further implies that the transformation of Korea's banking system from the current, specialized system to the universal banking system will not impede the improvement of the banking industry's efficiency. Second, the lending businesses turn out to be subjected to diseconomies of scale, while exhibiting unclear evidence for economies of scope. In sum, it implies potential efficiency gain of the continued in-house integration of the lending activity. Third, the continued integration of the trust businesses seems to contribute to improving the efficiency of the banking businesses, since the trust businesses exhibit economies of scope. Fourth, deposit services and fee-based activities, such as foreign exchange and credit card businesses, exhibit economies of scale but constant returns to scope, which implies, the possibility of separating those businesses from other banking and trust activities. The recent trend of the credit card business being operated separately from other banking activities by an independent identity in Korea as well as in the global banking market seems to be consistent with this finding. Then, how can the possibility of separating deposit services from the remaining activities be interpreted? If one insists a strict definition of commercial banking that is confined to deposit and commercial lending activities, separating the deposit service will suggest a resolution or a disappearance of banking, itself. Recently, however, there has been a suggestion that separating banks' deposit and lending activities by allowing a depository institution which specialize in deposit taking and investing deposit fund only in the safest securities such as government securities to administer the deposit activity will alleviate the risk of a bank run. This method, in turn, will help improve the safety of the payment system (Robert E. Litan, What should Banks Do? Washington, D.C., The Brookings Institution, 1987). In this context, the possibility of separating the deposit activity will imply that a new type of depository institution will arise naturally without contradicting the efficiency of the banking businesses, as the size of the banking market grows in the future. Moreover, it is also interesting to see additional evidences confirming this statement that deposit taking and security business are cost complementarity but deposit taking and lending businesses are cost substitute (see Table 2 for cost complementarity relationship in Korea's banking industry). Finally, it has been observed that the Korea's banking industry is lacking in the characteristics of natural monopoly. Therefore, it may not be optimal to encourage the merger and acquisition in the banking industry only for the purpose of improving the efficiency.